The Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) turn 50 next year. Despite the FPDA’s low profile, it is Asia’s most enduring and eclectic defence multilateral, composed of Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Unlike the more ambitious Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, now just a distant memory, the FPDA remains a living, breathing part of the Asia-Pacific defence ecosystem, particularly in Southeast Asia.

The threats have transformed over time, just as threat perceptions among its members have diverged. But the FPDA is still valued in all five capitals, for now. This was borne out in an unusual joint statement, recently issued by the FPDA defence ministers. As well as signalling their continuing political commitment, the statement noted that ‘a core focus on conventional warfare … has enabled FPDA to retain its relevance in an increasingly complex contemporary security environment.’ That may seem deliberately agnostic on the sources of potential threat, but was nevertheless an attempt to throw forward the FPDA’s relevance in the context of intensifying major-power competition in the region.

The FPDA is not a binding defence treaty on the NATO model, but commits the five members to consult in case of an armed attack on Malaysia or Singapore. Formed in 1971, when armed conflict was still raging across Southeast Asia and the memory of Indonesia’s ‘Confrontation’ still fresh, the FPDA has always had most direct value for Malaysia and Singapore, tying three other countries to their defence. Among these loose guarantors, it has special relevance for Australia as a sub-treaty recognition that Peninsular Malaysia is tied tangibly to its security and falls within Canberra’s outer defence perimeter. Australia has remained militarily present throughout the FPDA’s lifetime, at its operational core, in the form of a senior Royal Australian Air Force officer assigned to head the Integrated Area Defence System (IADS), which helps to safeguard Malaysian and Singaporean airspace, as well as an Australian rifle company located at Butterworth air base in western Malaysia.

Three key questions

The joint statement suggests that the short-term future of the FPDA is secure. However, three significant questions weigh on its long-term survival.

The first of these concerns public awareness. The FPDA is the Cinderella of Southeast Asian defence engagements. Often overlooked as an anachronism, including in member countries, the FPDA’s understated value is well understood by officials and military professionals on the inside. The limited visibility of the FPDA within member countries is not a problem for as long as the political will exists to maintain it. The biggest risk in this regard is that Malaysia’s commitment to the FPDA wanes because of a lack of political support, due in part to ignorance of the Arrangements. Malaysia hosts the IADS and most of the FPDA’s major exercises. Without Kuala Lumpur’s support, Australia, the UK and New Zealand would lose significant access for their armed forces in Southeast Asia, when the region’s strategic importance is rising. Malaysia potentially stands to lose much more, including a useful channel of communication with Singapore whenever bilateral frictions intensify.

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Awareness of the FPDA is surprisingly absent from Australia’s defence commentary, given that the arrangements have served Australia’s strategic interests remarkably faithfully. Official expressions of defence policy also tend to privilege the US alliance, bilateral partnerships (especially with Indonesia) and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus framework as the main modalities for delivering Australia’s defence objectives in the region. The FPDA struggles to compete for attention because it has blended into its Southeast Asian surroundings successfully, like a tropical office plant that is sometimes taken for granted. Strategic communications highlighting the importance of the FPDA need to be consistent and regular across the five members. The recent joint ministerial statement sets a good precedent.

For New Zealand and the United Kingdom, as their respective strategic horizons and defence capabilities have diminished over time, the ties that bind the FPDA to their security are less obvious than they were 50 years ago. Their commitment as external stakeholders has waxed and waned. But the FPDA is currently enjoying a minor resurgence in the UK as it seeks to a flesh out a global role and recover a ‘persistent‘ military presence in the Asia-Pacific. The itinerary for a long-promised aircraft carrier visit, on its first operational deployment next year, is likely to include a number of FDPA anniversary activities, to emphasise a renewed British commitment to Southeast Asia.

The second, knottier challenge is interoperability. This is a polite way of saying that Malaysia and New Zealand have fallen so far behind Australia, the UK and Singapore that the FPDA is now a two-tier grouping in capability terms. Ostensibly, the FPDA is an even partnership across the five signatories. But militarily it is in danger of becoming the ‘3+2’ defence arrangements. What does this mean for the future integrity of IADS and the FPDA? Since the capability gap is likely to widen, especially in air defence, FPDA members need to consider how other multilateral defence groupings, such as NATO, have adapted to this variability.

The FPDA’s high performers – the UK, Australia and Singapore – will all be operating the F-35, and have other commonalities across their equipment inventories. New Zealand’s decision to acquire a small fleet of P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft barely keeps it in the manned aircraft game beyond transports, while Malaysia’s aging fleet of Russian and American combat aircraft has no confirmed replacements yet. Unmanned technology could conceivably open up new roles in air defence for them beyond crewed platforms, and the FPDA is about significantly more than air defence these days. But it ultimately comes down to the widening gulf in defence resources among the membership. Malaysia and New Zealand simply spend far less than the others.

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The third area to think about is future partnerships. The potential for enlargement periodically surfaces as a question for the FPDA. There is zero appetite for this from the two Southeast Asian members, who fear it will dilute the foundational commitment to defending Malaysia and Singapore. This conservatism competes in tension with the desirability of cross-bracing the FPDA to other countries and structures in the region. Conservatism could also hold back the three ‘Anglo’ FPDA members, who do not wish to dilute their own relative importance as security providers in Southeast Asia. The challenge lies in providing more of an interface with non-members such as Indonesia, Japan and India, without upsetting the fragile balance between Malaysia and Singapore. The UK may be less risk-averse in this regard, given that it has fewer inroads into ADMM-plus defence networks than Australia or New Zealand.

Long-term vision

One of the interesting ambiguities about the FPDA is the extent to which it covers Malaysia’s territory on Borneo, since the original purview was limited to the Peninsula and adjacent exercise areas. There is potential relevance for Brunei here, as a non-FPDA member yet arguably informally within its remit, since the sultanate is wedged in by Malaysia and the South China Sea. Indeed, the contemporary context of the FPDA leads inescapably to the South China Sea, where China is rubbing up against Malaysia’s offshore claims, raising the possibility that external aggression and conventional warfare could again revisit Southeast Asia. As the powers cast five wary sets of eyes on the next 50 years, it is far from clear that their long-term vision is aligned.